One ex-wrestler says owner Vince McMahon's WWE and other leagues will "swallow, eat you up and spit you out." Photo by: PETER KRAMER / GETTY
Chris Benoit's Final Days
If anything changed Benoit in recent years, friends say, it was the death of fellow wrestler Eddie Guerrero in 2005. "His best friend in the business," says Bryan Alvarez, founder of the wrestling site FigureFourOnline.com. "I talked to him a lot after the death, and he was a broken man." Greg Oliver, founder of SLAM! Wrestling, a sports Web site in Toronto, shares an e-mail Benoit sent him after Guerrero's death that says in part: "My wife Nancy bought me a diary, and I have started to write letters to Eddie. It may sound crazy, but that is how I'm coping."

The first indication that something might be seriously wrong in the wrestler's life came when he missed a June 23 match in Texas. Speaking to a WWE staffer by phone, he apologized for oversleeping, adding, oddly, "I love you." In a series of calls that afternoon, according to the WWE, Benoit described a family emergency, being at a hospital, and his wife and son vomiting blood because of food poisoning. His final communication was an enigmatic text message he sent to a co-worker at 3:58 the next morning: "My address is 130 Green Meadow Lane. Fayetteville Georgia. 30215." By then, investigators believe, his wife and child were dead – and Benoit was perhaps minutes away from ending his own life.

• Larry Sutton. Reported by Jeff Truesdell, Siobhan Morrissey, Darla Atlas, Sean Scully, Elizabeth Cobb, Macon Morehouse, Amy Green, Isoul Harris, Debby Waldman, Christina Frangou, Johnny Dodd, Michaele Ballard, Sharon Cotliar and Wendy Grossman